


awaken

by spacehostage



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Feels, Child Death, Platonic Relationships, War, innocent casualties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:42:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26873881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehostage/pseuds/spacehostage
Summary: Amid a broken world of smoke and ash, even a nameless stranger can be called hope.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Reader, Sith!Obi-Wan Kenobi/Child!Reader
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	awaken

The flowers have always been the color of human blood. As do the trees. The grass. They said it is because the lifeblood of this planet is also red, dyeing all the plant lives in beauteous crimson and orange and purple. A tale your people proudly believe.

Fresh blades of grass are almost too harsh for your young skin. You can barely feel them under your cheek. No matter where everyone fled, none would get far away.

The pair of eyes staring back can no longer see, have long lost the luster of life. You wish them to blink. To fill with light and laughter once more.

A scream is silenced. You once again remember where you are. The bodies of your brothers and sisters and villagers lie very, very still. Scurrying feet had tried to run, but quickly halted. Every snuffing of a life is followed by a distinct _clank clank clank._

Your eyes are heavy, can’t keep open anymore, so you rest them. Horrible things cannot follow if you don’t see, and the pain will not hurt if you stop dreaming…

***

When your eyes open again, you are under a tree, a book open in your lap. You have dozed off in the middle of reading and the sky has turned a deeper blue. You rub sleep from your eyes, to see a lone figure a distance away. You don’t remember them being there before. They stand so close to the cliff’s edge, as if testing the might of the wind. You shut your book and carefully place it on the grass.

“Um, excuse me?” you address the stranger. “You will fall off if you go so close.”

The figure is like a statue, unmoving, makes you think they might not have heard your warning. But their winter cloak stirs heavily behind them, the pretty honey-brown hair gleams almost golden in the high noon sun. 

The stranger is a man. You peep the lighter color beard that neatly frames the lower half of his face. As much as you wonder how he looks, you refrain from approaching him any further. 

The man spends a good while looking to the horizon, but when he finally _does_ speak, it startles you.

“Has anyone fallen off this cliff?” he asks, not looking at you. He possesses an elegant tone, as smooth as a bowl of water with a flower petal on top.

You hesitate. You are told to not engage with strangers alone, but something about this man’s presence makes you feel compelled to answer him. 

“Uh, no,” you say, eyes firmly on his back. “Not that I know of.”

The man says nothing afterwards, continues to track the dark waters in peace. 

Or is he _really_ looking at the sea? His head is subtly tilted to the sky. If he’s looking for birds he won’t find any. At least not so soon. It will take at least a week for avians to come home after a long winter. You cannot wait for their spring songs to fill the air again.

He steps back from the ledge when he senses you’ve not left him yet, and slowly turns around. You can’t help the tiny gasp that escapes your lips when his eyes—a vibrant, almost glowing yellow, ringed with red—land on you. 

Well, he appears to be human, dismissing the unnatural feature that serves as his source of sight. The expression he wears seems harmless, but you won’t let it keep you from maintaining your guard up.

You stare at the man. The strange air that surrounds him tickles the sensory ends at the back of your neck, but the urge to run away doesn’t come. Instead, your curious mind is piqued. He is dressed in complete black, like the phantom your people whispered around the bonfire. The sun beams down on you both like a flower, the rays cast his hair into a paler sand.

Yes, he looks so much like someone in storybooks. Mysterious. Dark. Captivating. You’re almost too afraid to ask. 

_Are you real?_

But then he walks away, wordless, returning the cliff to you.

You watch until his figure is gone and then go retrieve your book by the tree and make for home. This is not the last time you will see the shadowy stranger. Just a feeling.

Fur-trimmed boots keep your feet warm and dry as you spring up the frost-dusted slope. The post-winter chill still lingers in the weather, so you’ve made sure to bundle up sufficiently before leaving the house. A scarlet fruit in one hand, your book in the other. And normally, you don’t expect to find a companion up there, encouraging you to claim it as your own getaway spot. Yet a surprise when you do find one sitting under your tree this time.

After a brief pause, you move slow, quiet, inspecting. This someone is not from your village. This person dons long…

Dark…

Robes.

Your eyes widen upon the sleeping face of the familiar stranger. He doesn’t seem to notice you though. In your head, you pat yourself on the back for executing successful stealth. 

The sunset casts his skin in an orange glow. His lashes are long enough to brush against his cheekbones. Peace adorns his face while he sleeps. Now, this is the time where you leave him be and find another spot, but something makes you stay. He looks so...at ease. As if _peace_ is not a visitor that frequents his life. And, right now, it looks like he’s finally being embraced by it.

“It’s rude to stare, you know.”

The voice causes you to jump back; yellow eyes, washed out by the sky, peer up at you.

“S-Sorry. Did I wake you?”

“Yes, you did.”

“Sorry...”

The man groans, sits up straighter, and makes space for you next to him. 

“Sit,” he pats the newly made spot.

Gingerly you plop down beside him, your outstretched legs not quite reaching his knees. For a while, you both just sit there, side by side, watching the sun dip lower into the horizon. It’s not awkward, and you kind of like it. His stronger form makes you feel safe too. Like a guardian knight. 

“You come here often?” he asks, though it sounds more like observing than questioning.

“Most of the time,” you nod. “When nobody wants to play because they have ‘grown up stuff’ to do.”

The man nods his head slowly, his arm resting on his bent knee.

“I like it here,” he leans back on the tree. “It’s high up. Scenic. Quiet.”

You agree with him. Not many wish to come here and enjoy the magnificence of the seascape, saying it’s a chore to hike up and not as wonderful anymore after visiting so many times. But not to you. You will always find something new to marvel about. 

“What’ve you got there?” He gestures to the object in your lap.

You’re happy that he asks, and hold the book up to show him. The beast hide covering causes it some weight, but it keeps the thin pages from damage.

“I got it when a vendor was in town. Though I’m not really on that level yet...”

A little orange leaf acts as a bookmark, the man’s eyebrow arching upward as he skims over the text, an analytical finger stroking his beard.

“This is about...war,” he says.

You shrug your shoulders, pouting a little. “And I barely understood half of them?”

He takes that answer and offers to read with you. You almost clapped with joy.

Words with grim imageries sound like a painting through the grace of his voice. Your little hands will tremble with labor trying to break open the fruit as he reads. He sees that and holds out his hand, again offering to help. Your jaw will drop as he splits the stubborn fruit like a twig and hands the halves back to you. You take one and he looks confused. 

“For you."

Perhaps nobody has gifted him a fruit before, because he looks unsure. But when you nudge it to him with eyes so cheerful he accepts it with a smile of his own.

Unusual this man may be, you also wonder.

“Are you a traveler? What makes you come here?”

It is harmless curiosity. Your planet is small and far away and rarely attracts visitors. If you do have some, you welcome them like you would with a good friend.

Yet something akin to… _sadness?_...dawns in his fire-like eyes. His face falters almost imperceptibly. And you almost apologize when he avoids your gaze to look into the distance. 

He is like a fine, pointed knife. Can cut anything he wills. But not the loneliness that you can sense from his person. It makes you sad in some way. Makes you want to comfort him. But you don’t know how.

The sky—reasonably—changes color. From high orange to with a blend of berry. His voice is thoughtful and open as he explains in a way which you can understand.

The ore your planet possesses would be an exceptional aid to their war effort. If your council agrees to the alliance, your people will have sure protection from the Separatists.

You gnaw at the inside of your cheek, mulling over what he said. But your people don’t take sides. It’s what kept your colony harmonious and safe for so long. And you don’t want bad things to come to your home.

He leaves you to your thoughts, pushes up onto his feet and walks to the tip of the cliff. His hands locked behind his back. His stance is relaxed. You follow him, getting up too, stopping where you think is a safe distance from the no ground. 

He notices you don’t dare to go any closer and looks back at you. 

“Do you trust me?” he extends his hand to you.

For some odd reason, you do trust him, and are surprised at how warm his hand is when you place your small one in his. His fingers are strong and promising when they curl around yours. The tides below crash rhythmically against the rocks, reaching up for you with their long, foamy claws. Your other hand will come up to grip his sleeve when you feel as though you will fall, and he laughs.

“Oh? You will pull me down with you?”

You will giggle, puffing out your chest like a king conquering all the suns and stars in the galaxy. 

Eventually, you both go back to admiring the canvas; painted by the tired day. This is the most unexpected, in your colorful, bustling little mind. Holding a stranger’s hand at the rim where things can fall off and swept away into the possessive sea. However, together with him, you’re not afraid.

“I’m glad you’re here,” you smile, meeting his golden eyes. “It’s less lonely now.”

You can feel the grasp on your hand tighten fractionally, fondly; his eyes almost glimmering with a rare light. An emotion dusty with disuse.

“Is that so?”

After that day you don’t find him under the tree anymore. Not the next day. Or the next. It is a short period you two shared, yet, it feels like you have known him for a long time. Long enough that you actually…

Miss him.

That morning is filled with smoke. Licked by fire. Tormented by screams. 

No matter where you look, your eyes will fall upon someone you knew. On the ground. Twisted and dead. Your hair stuck to your skin. Your face tainted with grime. Surrounded by the carnage of your village.

It was sudden. They have come into your home, massacre your people, razing everything you have ever known to the ground. Tall, lanky droids storm into huts and mute the screams before they can be born. They perform as if a routine. No mistakes, cold like the thinning ice under your feet. 

One second you are tossed into the air, the next the impact knocks the breath out of you when you land. Dirt and gravel rise like geysers and fall like rain. A cry will scrape past your throat, pain paralyzes your limbs. You lie there with your fallen people, choking on dust and ash as your senses blur with the heavens.

Chaos continues to unravel when you come to once more. You faintly wonder why you are still here. Your sobs are nothing more than frosted breaths. The smell of burning flesh assaults your nose. Sludge gets into your eye making you blink painfully.

There are figures in white—a lot of them—joining the killing machines…

Or they are not. Whoever they are, you only wish the loud, scary noises will stop. 

You try to roll yourself onto your side, wincing at the pain tearing at your body. But when you see something in the distance, you freeze over. 

Over there. 4 long beams clashing together over and over. 2 green. 1 blue. 1 red.

 _Jedi._

They have come to drive the bad guys off your home. They are—

All the air leaves you at once. Among the 3 wielders is…

A phantom in black. 

_It’s him. He came back!_

You recognize those dark robes even from afar. The earth color hair. Relief floods you like a wave, seeping into your bones, making you shake. And like a ray of hope, he lights a path and you blindly follow it. Eyes wide. Mouth open. Feet stumbling over debris. 

He may not have been your father. He may not have been your brother. He might not even have been your friend. But nothing matters now, so long as you’re by his side. You barely notice the warning shout from behind nor the hand reaching for your back; only having eyes on the stranger whose name you still do not know. 

It could be you are within reach, could be the heavy, wet jacket you wore, but everything seems so…slow. As if time deliberately stretches so you cannot get to him.

Fire blasts through your body, holes burning into flesh. It is then that he finally looks your way. You can see his otherworldly eyes widen under his eloquent brows, his duel with the young man and girl ceases as your small, sizzling body hits the ground. 

You can see your friend now. But they aren't looking you. Your eyes meet, but you're not _seen._ You pray and pray for their little fingers to touch yours. To hold your hand. The whispers in your head confuse you. _Close your eyes and go to sleep._ But isn’t this a dream? A horrible horrible dream?

But like a good child you are, you will close your eyes, and hopefully, you will wake up.

***

Obi-Wan Kenobi stands before a small grave, hidden by the dark hood of his cloak. A long time his eyes stay on the piece of rubble made into a tombstone. The name on it was written with heart and grief. Like the hundreds around him. He had watched the surviving populace come together to give their lost folk a formal send-off. He had watched the child being lowered into the embrace of earth. He swore to never return to this planet again, but found himself here, before them, all the same. 

He sets a single white flower atop the red one, a rarity he knows they would have loved and demanded to know where he found it. He can imagine their eager, young face lighting up in awe. 

It has been longer than he can remember—the painful tug in his chest. When he had truly cared for someone. It’s strange, indeed. Someone so inexperienced, so gullible, had effortlessly, unknowingly, invoked an emotion he had long buried in the deepest, darkest chasm in his heart. And that flame may stay in him for a long time, until it becomes all but a distant memory.

Turning to leave, having fulfilled the purpose of his visit, a high-pitched screech comes from overhead. Looking up, he sees the first avian return, circling the sky, singing what he can understand as a song of spring.


End file.
